Dr. Sina Rafati Niya

Dr. Sina Rafati Niya has been pursuing his research in blockchain data governance and analytics with a focus on PoS-based Blockchains such as Cardano, Tezos, Casper, and Polkadot since 2022 as a senior researcher at the Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies (BDLT) group at University of Zürich (UZH). 

Since 2017, he has conducted continuous research on blockchain-based decentralized Applications (dApps) and protocols, especially in Decentralized Finance (DeFi), Supply Chain Tracking, Identity Management, and Internet-of-Things (IoT) domains. 

Sina received his Ph.D. from the UZH on the topic of “Efficient Designs for Practical Blockchain-IoT Integration” in 2021. He has published multiple scientific articles in blockchain-based service management, and blockchain analytics in recent years 

• Blockchain Data Engineering
• Blockchain Data Analysis
• Blockchain systems and applications

2025

1. [Journal Paper] M. Chegenizadeh, N. Larionov, S. Rafati Niya, Y. Yanovich, C. J Tessone, "Cardano Shared Send Transactions Untangling in Numbers," 2025, Blockchain: Research and Applications, Elsevier, url: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bcra.2024.100269

2024

1. [Full Paper] M.Chegenizadeh, S. Rafati Niya, C. J Tessone, "Heuristic-based Address Clustering in Cardano Blockchain," 2024, Proceedings of the 1st ChainScience Conference in Boston, MA, USA. url:https://forum.cardano.org/uploads/shorturl/kiyxr8ikEcBhpJZjy8yDYZNIuI2.pdf
2. [Full Paper] M.Chegenizadeh, S. Rafati Niya, C. J Tessone,  "Multi-agent Privacy-Preserving Micro-payment Verification for Offline Resource-Constrained Devices Using Smart Contracts" The International Conference on Mathematical Research for Blockchain Economy 2024, P. 129-144, Springer, Cham

2023

1. [Short Paper] S. Rafati Niya, I. Mesić, G. Anagnostou, G. Brunini and C. J. Tessone, "A First Analytics Approach to Cardano," 2023 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC), Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 2023, pp. 1-5, doi: 10.1109/ICBC56567.2023.10174896.
2. [Short Paper] M. Piskorec, B. D. James Murphy, F. Rüegsegger, S. Rafati Niya and C. J. Tessone, "Bow-tie Structure of the Polkadot Transfer Network," 2023 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC), Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 2023, pp. 1-4, doi: 10.1109/ICBC56567.2023.10174939.

2022

1. [Book Chapter] Sina Rafati Niya, Burkhard Stiller: Enabling Technologies and Distributed Storage; in: Anwer Al-Dulaimi, Octavia Dobre, Chih-Lin I (Edt.), "Blockchains: Empowering Technologies and Industrial Applications", IEEE/Wiley, May 2021, https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119675525.ch13.
2. [Full Paper] Sina Rafati Niya, and Burkhard Stiller, “Efficient Designs for Practical Blockchain-IoT Integration,” Network Operations and Management Symposium, IEEE/IFIP, April 2022.
3. [Poster Paper] Sina Rafati Niya, Julius Willems, and Burkhard Stiller, “A Case Study of a Blockchain-GDPR Adaptation,” International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency, IEEE, Virtual Conference, May 2022.
4. [PhD Thesis] Sina Rafati Niya, Efficient Designs for Practical Blockchain-IoT Integration, https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/218583/1/218583.pdf
5. [Journal Paper] Rafati Niya, S., Bachmann, S., Brasser, C. et al. DeTi: A Decentralized Ticketing Management Platform. J Netw Syst Manage 30, 62 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10922-022-09675-3

2021

1. [Full Paper] Sina Rafati Niya, Danijel Dordevic, Burkhard Stiller: ITrade: A Blockchain-based, Self-Sovereign, and Scalable Marketplace for IoT Data Streams; IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management (IM 2021), Bordeaux, France, May 2021, 530-536. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9507182
2. [Full Paper] Sina Rafati Niya, Danijel Dordevic, Markus Hurschler, Sarah Grossenbacher, Burkhard Stiller: A Blockchain-based Supply Chain Tracing to Empower The Swiss Dairy Value Chain; 2nd International Conference on Societal Automation, SA 2021, Funchal, Portugal, May 2020, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9507182
3. [Full Paper-arXiv] Sina Rafati Niya, Julius Willems, and Burkhard Stiller, “On-Chain IoT Data Modification in Blockchains,” 2021, https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.10756.

2020

1. [Full Paper] Sina Rafati Niya, Eryk Schiller, Ile Cepilov, Burkhard Stiller: Standardization of Blockchain-based I2oT Systems in the I4 Era; IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium, "Management in the Age of Softwarization and Artificial Intelligence", Budapest, Hungary, April 2020.
2. [Full Paper] Sina Rafati Niya, Fabio Maddaloni, Thomas Bocek, Burkhard Stiller: Toward Scalable Blockchains with Transaction Aggregation; The 35th ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, "Decentralized Applications (DAPP) with Blockchain, DLT and Crypto-Currencies", Brno, Czech Republic, March 2020.
3. [Full Paper] Sina Rafati Niya, Raphael Beckmann, Burkhard Stiller: DLIT: A Scalable Distributed Ledger for IoT Data; 2nd International Conference on Blockchain Computing and Applications (BCCA2020), Antalya, Turkey (Remote), November 2020.
4. [Technical Report] Sina Rafati Niya, Benjamin Jeffrey, Burkhard Stiller: A Blockchain-based Self-sovereign IoT Identification; University of Zurich, IFI-TecReport, Zürich, Switzerland, August 2020, URL: https://owncloud.csg.uzh.ch/index.php/s/9o4M2fngmLrNgJW. 
5. [Technical Report] Sina Rafati Niya, Raphael Beckmann, Burkhard Stiller: BIoT: A Hybrid Blockchain for IoT Data; University of Zurich, IFI-TechReport No. 2020.2, Zürich, Switzerland, July 2020, URL: https://owncloud.csg.uzh.ch/index.php/s/TJHqxDgTtJNG66T.
6. [Book Chapter] Sina Rafati Niya, Eryk Schiller, Burkhard Stiller: Architectures for Blockchain-IoT Integration; in: Nur Zincir-Heywood, Yixin Diao, Marco Mellia (Edt.), "Communication Networks and Service Management in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning", Wiley-IEEE Press, New York, NY, USA, December 2020, pp 100-137.
7. [Full Paper] Sina Rafati Niya, Benjamin Jeffrey, Burkhard Stiller: KYoT: Self-sovereign IoT Identification with a Physically Unclonable Function; The 45th IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN), Sydney, Australia (virtual conference), November 2020.
8. [Technical Report] Sina Rafati Niya, Danijel Dordevic, Markus Hurschler, Sarah Grossenbacher, and Burkhard   Stiller, “A Blockchain-based Supply Chain Tracing for the Swiss Dairy Use Case”, IfI Technical Report No. 2020.07, Zürich, Switzerland, November 2020.  https://owncloud.csg.uzh.ch/index.php/s/rH6sA25C9JegEHW

2019

1. [Technical Report] Sina Rafati Niya, Burkhard Stiller: BAZO: A Proof-of-Stake (PoS) based Blockchain; UZH, IFI-TecReport No. 2019.03, Zürich, Switzerland, May 2019, URL: https://files.ifi.uzh.ch/CSG/staff/Rafati/BAZO-IFI-2019.03.pdf.
2. [Technical Report] Sina Rafati Niya, Sebastian Allemann, Arik Gabay, Burkhard Stiller: Blockchain-based Anonymous P2P Trading System; UZH, IFI-TecReport No. 2019.04, Zürich, Switzerland, June 2019, URL: https://files.ifi.uzh.ch/CSG/staff/Rafati/TradeMap-IFI-2019.04.pdf.
3. [Short Paper] Sina Rafati Niya, Sebastian Allemann, Arik Gabay, Burkhard Stiller: TradeMap: A FINMA-compliant Anonymous Management of an End-2-end Trading Market Place; 15th International Conference on Network and Service Management CNSM 2019, Halifax, Canada, October 2019, pp 1-4. URL: https://files.ifi.uzh.ch/CSG/staff/Rafati/CNSM19.pdf. 
4. [Full paper] E. Schiller, S. R. Niya, T. Surbeck and B. Stiller, "Scalable Transport Mechanisms for Blockchain IoT Applications," 2019 IEEE 44th LCN Symposium on Emerging Topics in Networking (LCN Symposium), Osnabrück, Germany, 2019, pp. 34-41.
5. [Demo] Sina Rafati Niya, Danijel Dordevic, Atif Ghulam Nabi, Tanbir Mann, Burkhard Stiller: A Platform-independent, Generic-purpose, and Blockchain-based Supply Chain Tracking; IEEE International Conference on Blockchains and Cryptocurrencies, "ICBC 2019 - Demo", Seoul, South Korea, May 2019. url: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8751415/
6. [Demo] Sina Rafati Niya, Eryk Schiller, Ile Cepilov, Fabio Maddaloni, Timo Surbeck, Kürsat Aydinli, Thomas Bocek: Adaptation of Proof-of-Stake-based Blockchains for IoT Data Streams; IEEE International Conference on Blockchains and Cryptocurrencies, "ICBC 2019 - Demo", Seoul, South Korea, May 2019. url: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8751260.
7. [Demo] Andreas Schaufelbühl, Sina Rafati Niya, Lucas Pelloni, Severin Wullschleger, Thomas Bocek, Burkhard Stiller, Lawrence Rajendran: EUREKA -- A Minimal Operational Prototype of a Blockchain-based Rating and Publishing System; IEEE International Conference on Blockchains and Cryptocurrencies, "ICBC 2019 - Demo ()", Seoul, South Korea, May 2019. url: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8751445
8. [Full Paper] Sina Rafati Niya, Lucas Pelloni, Severin Wullschleger, Andreas Schaufelbühl, Thomas Bocek, Burkhard Stiller, Lawrence Rajendran: A Blockchain-based Scientific Publishing Platform; IEEE International Conference on Blockchains and Cryptocurrencies, "ICBC 2019 - Demo", Seoul, South Korea, May 2019. url: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8751379/
9. [Poster] Sina Rafati Niya, Danijel Dordevic, Atif Ghulam Nabi, Tanbir Mann, Burkhard Stiller: IoT and Blockchain-Integrated Supply Chain Tracking System; 3rd for Digital Workshop on Blockchains, Karlsruhe, Germany, February 2019.

2018

1. [Journal Paper] - Sina Rafati Niya, Florian Schüpfer, Thomas Bocek, Burkhard Stiller: A Peer-to-peer Purchase and Rental Smart Contract-based Application (PuRSCA); it - Information Technology, (2018) Retrieved 8 Oct. 2018, doi:10.1515/itit-2017-0036. URL: https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/itit.ahead-of-print/itit-2017-0036/itit-2017-0036.xml
2. [Poster] - Sina Rafati Niya, Burkhard Stiller: Poster: Design and Evaluation of a Time Efficient Vertical Handoff Algorithm between LTE-A and IEEE 802.11ad Wireless Networks; IFIP Networking 2018, "IFIP Networking", Zürich, Switzerland, May 2018, pp 100-101. link
3. [Technical Report] - Sina Rafati Niya, Burkhard Stiller: Design and Evaluation of a Time Efficient Vertical Handoff Algorithm between LTE-A and IEEE 802.11ad Wireless Networks; UZH-IfI, IFI-TecReport No. 2018.03, Zürich, Switzerland, April 2018, URL: https://files.ifi.uzh.ch/CSG/staff/Rafati/Handoff-IFI-2018.03.pdf.
4. [Technical Report] - Sina Rafati niya, Florian Schüpfer, Thomas Bocek, Burkhard Stiller: A Peer-to-Peer Purchase and Rental SmartContract-based Application; University of Zurich- IFI, IFI-TecReport No. 2017.04, Zürich, Switzerland, November 2017. link
5. [Demo] - Sina Rafati Niya, Florian Schüpfer, Thomas Bocek, Burkhard Stiller: Demo- Setting up Flexible and Light Weight Trading Contracts with Enhanced User Privacy Using Smart Contracts; 16th EEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium, "Cognitive Management in a Cyber World", Taipei, Taiwan, April 2018, pp 100-104. URL: https://files.ifi.uzh.ch/CSG/staff/Rafati/BTSCA.pdf.
6. [Short Paper] Sina Rafati Niya, Sanjiv S. Jha, Thomas Bocek, Burkhard Stiller: Design and Implementation of an Automated and Decentralized Pollution Monitoring System with Blockchains, Smart Contracts, and LoRaWAN; 16th IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium, "Cognitive Management in a Cyber World", Taipei, Taiwan, April 2018, pp 100-102. URL: https://files.ifi.uzh.ch/CSG/staff/Rafati/BPMS.pdf.

2017

1. [Journal] - Thomas Bocek, Sina Rafati, Bruno Rodrigues, Burkhard Stiller.  CoinBlesk - A Real-time, Bitcoin-based Payment Approach and App. ERCIM News - Special Issue: Blockchain Engineering, Vol. 2017, No. 110, July 2017, pp 14-15. Link
2. [Full Paper] - Bruno Rodrigues, Thomas Bocek, David Hausheer, Andri Lareida, Sina Rafati, Burkhard Stiller. A Blockchain-based Architecture for Collaborative DDoS Mitigation with Smart Contracts and SDN. 11th International Conference on Autonomous Infrastructure, Management and Security (AIMS 2017). July 10-14, Zurich, Switzerland.